


We have the blinding light

by a_verysmallviolet



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Gen, Mentions of Racism, another look at republic city, young people overturning tradition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-21
Updated: 2014-09-21
Packaged: 2018-02-18 04:59:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 428
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2336147
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/a_verysmallviolet/pseuds/a_verysmallviolet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's more than one revolution in Republic City.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We have the blinding light

**Author's Note:**

> _Con lai_ is a Vietnamese term that refers to children of mixed descent, though usually without the level of stigma portrayed here.
> 
> The title comes from Les Friction's "Louder than Words."

In the wake of the Hundred Years’ War, a new word comes into use. Or, rather, it’s an old word rescurrected, one that has lost none of its sting. _Con lai_ : technically it just means “mixed child,” but somehow it manages to compress bastard, mongrel, and ill-raised into two brutally short syllables. It’s a word to be thrown at children with pale eyes in pale faces, or those with dark skin and full lips above fire-colored clothing. _Con lai_.

Tahno laughs and throws the word right back at them.

“ _Con lai_ ,” he says when reporters buzz around him with questions about his nationality. Oh, they murmur, and cast their eyes down in abashment. Oh, perhaps you mean of mixed descent, or ethnically complicated, or – 

“No,” he says. “I mean _con lai_.”

It’s a disgrace, gasp society matrons as they clutch at their jade necklaces. It’s an outrage, thunder the guardians of morality over dinner tables and in newspaper editorials. Look how he flaunts his mixed blood. This immoral delinquent will teach our young to disregard their heritage.

That’s life, says Tahno coolly.

He doesn’t have to be told to look at the city to see the ripples of change beginning. He already sees it whenever he passes teenagers in clothing without any identifying colors or insignia, who use slang from four cultures and add in their own. Girls are cutting off their hair loops and buns, donning sleek bobs instead. Boys are shaving their wolf tails and wispy scholar’s beards, growing back their hair evenly and raiding their sisters’ dressers for gels and creams. Hems raise, coats shorten, trouser legs flare and then slim again. There is nothing here of the old country.

But we’re _not_ part of the old country, the young people laugh when their elders remonstrate with them. We’re United Republic citizens. We’re _con lai_.

This is Tahno’s revolution. Leave the soldiers and special forces to the governments moving in distant rings high overhead. He’ll take the kids off the street, the teenagers who seize what they want and damn the consequences. Every pro-bending victory goes to the half-born, the children called mutts and soldier’s spawn, the ones who wear blue and fight with earth, the amber-eyed ones with the moon in their veins. They'll walk with their heads held high now, these kohl-eyed dangerous miscreants whose hearts beat with gorgeously vital blood. They'll walk with their heads high enough to knock down the sun, and damn anyone who would try to make them bow.

This is Tahno’s revolution, and victory is so very sweet.


End file.
